This is an absolutely stunning instrument made with unbelievable soul, precision, and attention detail from one of my favorite guitar manufacturing cities on earth, Paracho, México!
This Requinto is both stunning in appearance and as musical instrument. Requintos are designed to be played with higher tension strings as if you had a Capo on the fifth fret and tuned A to A, but I’m going to let you in on a little secret, so gather around because you heard it here first. You can put traditional gauge classical strings on these cute little requintos, tune them E to E, and they are the most EPIC and soulful travel guitars that have ever existed. I’m super crazy serious. They feel totally perfect, just like a smaller guitar. I love taking guitars with me when I travel and writing on the road, but it can be tough to find a travel guitar with a deep vibe. Taylor GS minis and the like are stamped out by the thousands on C&C machines in big factories, and if I’m hiking to the top of a mountain to write a song, it only completes the picture to bring something that was hand carved by an old man with his sons in the mountains of central Mexico. Every guitar has it’s place, and no shade on factory produced travel guitars, but when I’m traveling I want to channel inspiration from an instrument just as much as the place I traveled to.
So this guitar is a masterful work of art. Looks like an absolutely beautiful spruce top, with hands down the coolest abalone inlay work I’ve ever seen around the rosette. Each one of those abalone tiles is cut out and laid by hand, I don’t know if it’s possible for that to be any cooler. The binding around the entire top has a hypnotic psychedelic pattern, like a giant this snake wrapping around the entire top of the guitar.
The back and sides are Palo Escrito, also known as Mexican Rosewood. This is a common wood for the back and sides of the higher end guitars that come out of Paracho. It’s a little more reddish/copper colored than most other rosewoods you find throughout the world. I love everything about this wood. I love the look, the patterns, the sound, and even the smell is amazing.
Really nice bone and nut saddle. I’ve played a lot of Paracho guitars and I’m a huge admirer of them, there is something about the quality of the bone I see on their guitars that blows all other bone away. When you drop the bone saddle from a short distance onto a piece of granite it sounds like a piano note, it has its own musicality. That’s a little test you can do to see the quality of a bridge, it’s like how you listen to a gold coin bounce off of a table.
Every note and chord is in tune. So crazy they are able to accomplish a guitar as amazing as this one using basically all hand tools. It blows my mind and also renews my faith in humanity. Paracho has been continuously making guitars for 150 years, they are a symbol of resilience and the beauty of tradition in Mexico. I used the ball end strings on this, they go with the vibe of the guitar. There's a few scuffs here and there, but overall it's in beautiful condition. Comes with this epic case! Cases for these can be a little tough to find and this one rules. Amazing guitar, great history, stunning instrument!
